WIP Roundup - The Waiting

Today I'm sharing some of my other works in progress (WIPs). These are the projects I haven't worked on in the past week or so, but I plan to start working on again soon.

First up is my Rhapsody in Cables sweater.  I fell in love with this sweater as soon as the pattern was released and had to start it immediately!  I initially started it in the yarn I'm using for my Sweet Chilly sweater I talked about yesterday, but between the darkness and slight variegation of that yarn, the cables just weren't showing up well, so I ripped it out and started the Sweet Chilly with that yarn.  But I still really wanted to cast on this pattern, so I'm doing it now in some Morning Meadows yarn in a natural colorway I bought at SAFF in 2015.  I got started at the end of January, but then I started to realize I didn't have too long to finish all the things I wanted to finish before Frolic, so this one has gotten set aside for the past few weeks and doesn't look like much right now, but as soon as my Sweet Chilly sweater is done, this one is getting some serious attention.

 The next two projects that are getting ready to go back into the regular rotation are a couple of baby blankets.  My daughter is pregnant with her first child and due in June with a boy, so of course I'm making a blanket for him.  I don't think it will be any surprise to her if she sees this that I'm making him a blanket, but I will hold off disclosing the details until I've finished it and gifted it.  I'm hoping to get it finished by the time or shortly after he's born.

I've also got a blanket I started for my grandson (my son's son) when he was a couple of months old that's been hibernating way too long.  That's a Baby Dragon Blanket  that I'm making in Cascade 220 Sport.  I made him one blanket before he was born, but his older sister got two, including one with a castle on it when she was born, so I thought a dragon would be cool for him.  He'll be 2 in July so that's my artificial deadline for finishing it this year, and really 2 years old is the perfect age to appreciate a blanket with a dragon on it right?

I'm also planning to get back to spinning regularly as well.  I've currently got a gradient set from Three Waters Farm in progress, but I haven't spun in a while.  Here's what I've spun so far and the waiting fiber. 

Towards the end of last year I started working on counted cross stitch again.  I pulled out a couple of old projects that had been hibernating for years and started a couple of new ones, that are now hibernating.  But I signed up this year for the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's year long Happily Ever After pattern.  They send a portion of the pattern each month, and I started out doing well in January, but that's fallen by the wayside as well.  I want to get back to working on it again regularly so I don't get so far behind.  I still haven't finished January, so it will take a couple of months, but if I start actually working on it sometime soon it's possible.

So those are the things I plan to try to put some work into in the next few weeks, but sadly, they're not the only things in progress.  Next time I'll talk about the blankets.

2017 Crafting Goals

I've set some new crafting goals for 2017.  I'll do an update on how I did on 2016's crafting goals later, but here are the new ones for this year.

• Knit 1 pair of Desert Vista Dyeworks socks/month
  
• 2 projects with handspun
  
• 2 projects with laceweight
  
• 3 projects with yarn added to stash before 2016 (this can cross over with handspun or lace goals)
  
• Reduce total number of stash entries (including trade/sale) to 540 or less (currently 554)
  
• Spin at least 12 fiber stash entries
  
• Reduce fiber stash entries to 65 or less (currently 70)
  
• 3 sewing projects of some kind
  
• Stay on track with Frosted Pumpkin Happily Ever After monthly pattern
  
• Aim for more yardage out than in on a quarterly basis (handspun created does not count as yardage in, but handspun knit counts towards yardage out)

I've got a few other goals that aren't crafting related, but they're still in generalizations at the moment, so maybe I'll talk about them at some point.

As usual, I'm going to try to start posting here more, but we'll see how it goes.

Finally FO Friday

After taking a couple of weeks off for the holidays, the last two weeks of work have seemed inordinately long.  So I'm glad it's finally Friday, and it's a 3-day weekend to boot!

I was feeling the need to work on some quick projects this week and get the sense of accomplishment that comes with actually finishing something, so I made up these three hats.  Aren't they adorable?! The blue & green monkey is for my 6-month old grandson, the pink & purple unicorn is for my 3-year old granddaughter, and the blue & white bear is for my 17-month old nephew.

The yarn is Top This! by DMC and it comes with the cute little animal heads to make these.  Each one knits up in just an hour or two, so I made these in three consecutive nights this week.  One caution if you want to make these, the pattern runs very small.  I actually knit the monkey one twice.  I had heard that the pattern ran small, so I knit the toddler size for my 6-month old grandson, but even that looked too small to me.  So I ripped it out and made the small child size for him, and I made the full child size for my granddaughter and nephew.  If they're a little big, that's always better than too small.

I'm hoping for a relaxing weekend.  I've got some yarn to ply off the bobbin so that I can get started on my Spin the Bin goals for 2016.  I finished spinning the singles last weekend, but didn't want to start spinning something else until this last thing left from last year is completely done.  I also need to sort and organize some clothes this weekend and see what can be donated. Finally, I want to get Scrivener reinstalled on my laptop because so far I have made no progress on my goal to actually write for 30 minutes 3 times per week.  I reloaded my laptop early in 2015 and I've never reloaded Scrivener, which tells you how little writing I've actually done in the past year.  Hoping to change that.

So that's it for today.  Happy Friday!

2016 Goals

Unlike 2015, which was the year of no goals, I've set some goals for 2016, and one of them is to blog here at least three times per week, so I probably should get on that by actually writing a post huh?

I've done some serious thinking and planning about goals this year.  Who knows if I'll be able to achieve all of them, but I'm going to try.  I'm also trying a technique I've read a lot about of having a word and a mission statement for the year. 

While I will probably talk more about most of these in future posts, for the purpose of this one, I'm just going to give you the list, or as Joe Friday says..."just the facts."

My word for the year is....  

DETERMINATION

My mission statement for the year is....

 Determination and action lead to achievement.

Writing Goals

• Blog 3x/week
• Write 30 minutes 3x/week
• Journal regularly

Health Goals

• Make exercise a habit
• Lose weight (I've set a more specific number, but I'm going to keep it general here for now) 

Crafting Goals

• More yarn out (knit) than in (purchased)
• Knit 12 pairs of socks
• Spin the bin challenge
• 2 laceweight projects
• 2 handspun projects
• Finish Marigold Moroccan
• Steeked & Zippered Cardigan
• Learn to sew 

Crafting Update

There's been too much knitting, spinning, and overall crafting happening this year to completely cover what I've worked on this year.

You may remember that my crafting goal this year was to avoid any goals or deadlines and to just craft what I wanted when I wanted.  I've been pretty successful, although it's resulted in quite a few more works in progress (WIPs) than I usually have. 

I usually have 5-6 WIPs, sometimes venturing up towards 8 or 9, but right now I have 13.  Three of those are long-term scrap blanket projects and one project is the beaded lace shawl I've worked on off & on for the past 4 years (hint, no progress made this year really, but it's going to become a priority in 2016), so I guess that's really only 9 WIPs, but still a lot.  I'll share some more info on most of those soon.

Despite the "no deadlines" goal for this year, a couple of the WIPs are items I'd like to finish for Christmas gifts.  One of them will most likely get finished, the other probably not, but that's o.k.  I don't really consider these violations of the no deadlines rule since I'm not going to feel guilty if neither of them get finished. The one that probably won't get finished in time for Christmas is for my grandson, who's not quite 5 months old, so I doubt he'll notice.

I did participate in a couple of knit-a-longs (KAL) this year, because KALs are just fun.  It's fun to work on the same project at the same time as other people and share info on where you are in the pattern, ask questions, etc.  Most of the ones I did this year were with the Carolina Fiber Girls.  The did a KAL in the spring where everyone made something with Jones Street yarn from The Copper Corgi.   The KAL lasted a couple of months and I actually finished 2 sweaters.  I made a Hiro out of Jones Street Worsted and a Triticum out of Jones Street Sport.

I don't have a modeled shot of this one.

 

Looks great with my sweatpants doesn't it?

 

 

 

 I also couldn't resist the competition of Socktober with the Carolina Fiber Girls, and I completed 7 pairs of socks in October.  There were points involved for different things and I actually came in 4th place and won a skein of (you guessed it) sock yarn.

Collywobbles

Fireweeds

I was spinning pretty regularly the first part of the year, but not as much since work started getting so busy.  For some reason I just lost my spinning mojo.  I've spun a little here and there, but right now, the project on my wheel is one I started September 12th and I'm still not done spinning the singles.  I'll get back to it I know, it's just not what I've felt like doing as much lately.

I haven't done any weaving since March really.  Just haven't made the time to set up the loom with a new project.  I bought some yarn at SAFF specifically for a weaving project though, so I'll definitely get something started in the new year if not before.

While it's been nice not to set any rules for my crafting this year, I think I'll be going back to setting some goals for 2016.  I'm still going to try not to get too over-committed on things with deadlines, even if they are self-imposed ones, but I like to have a bit of a plan for my knitting, and I like checking things off a list.

SAFF 2015

One of my favorite trips of the year is the annual Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) held just outside Asheville, NC.  This year, because the dates of the event were moved to the last weekend in October, there was no tractor show, so we were able to use the entire grounds of the Western North Carolina Agriculture Center.

This year I took two classes.  On Thursday I took an all day spinning class with Judith MacKenzie.  I still consider myself very much a novice spinner, so I really learned a lot in this class.  Unfortunately, as is usual when I get immersed in what I'm doing, I didn't think to take a single picture of Judith or anything we did in this class.

Friday morning I took a class with my secret boyfriend Franklin Habit. This class was on doing steeks (aka cutting your knitting on purpose) and installing zippers into knitting.  I had never done either one of these techniques, and while I'm generally a "learn what you need to know to do the project" type knitter I thought it would be helpful to actually have someone physically show me how to do it.  And of course, I had to take at least one of Franklin's classes (secret boyfriend remember?)  While I wasn't particularly doubtful of my ability to do either of these things before, now I know for sure how to do them, and I'm currently scanning patterns to do both in a sweater.  Fortunately, I had a little more focus on Friday and did get a picture of Franklin with Dolores in the background.

Friday afternoon was the first chance I had to do some shopping with all the vendors.  I had a couple of specific projects I was looking to find yarn for, so I focused on those mostly Friday, although I picked up a few things not on my list as well!

Saturday I had no classes, so I decided not to get up at the wee hours with the rest of the group, and instead slept a little longer and got to SAFF about 11:00 am.  One of our group has a vacation home about 45 minutes away from SAFF and she graciously lets us stay there.  Not only is it a huge money saver (more money for yarn & fiber & classes!) but it's nice to have a comfortable place to sit around together in the evening and show what we bought or made that day & just knit and socialize.

This was the day I made it over to the barns to see the animals.  Alpacas and llamas and goats and sheep.  Just about any fiber animal you can think of.  And because they're all so cute and furry I took lots of pictures.  I won't subject you to all of them, just some of the cutest.

Baby Suri Alpaca

Baby Alpaca

More Baby Alpacas

Llama

I admired this sheep's dreads

Nosy Sheep

This one just wanted you to scratch between his horns

Saturday night we joined Ann & Janis of the Carolina Fiber Girls podcast and a few others for dinner at the Sierra Nevada Brewery just down the road.  I'm not a beer drinker, but the food was pretty good and it's undeniably a gorgeous building.  I think I need to take Rob there the next time we're in the Asheville area.

Outside of the brewery

Vats of beer

Something to do with making beer

Sunday morning we took our time getting up, packing, and loading up the cars for the drive home.  Michiele was riding with me and we decided to make one more quick stop at SAFF on the way home.  A couple more purchases were made, and we headed home.  I'm so glad I took Monday off work too because besides needing to do laundry and grocery shopping, I need to some time to admire and inventory my haul from the event.

It's quite a haul, but almost all of it was bought with a specific project in mind.  That gorgeous teal grouping towards the bottom of the picture is already being knit into a sweater in fact.

All in all, another great year at SAFF.  The classes, the yarn, the fiber make it worth the trip every year, but the weekend with such great friends that share my love of all that SAFF offers make it more than just a trip.

January Crafting Recap

I can't believe it's February already, so I guess you get the last 3 weeks of January crammed into one post.  Not that there's all that much to tell really.

So far the "no goals" thing is going well, although as I mentioned before, you'd be surprised how hard it is NOT to set goals.  It's made me realize how often I set little goals and make bargains with myself..."if I do X, then I can do Y".

On the knitting & spinning front, I've enjoyed just working on whatever I feel like in the moment.  It means that I didn't finish a lot in January and I have a lot of works in progress (WIPS), but that's o.k.  The flip side is it means that I'm actually enjoying working on whatever I'm working on at that moment, and not feeling like I just "need" to work on it because I haven't in a while, or I have to finish it for a deadline, or some other reason.

I did finish knitting this pair of socks for me.  I also did a little weaving and wove a scarf. My edges are still really bad and uneven, but I haven't practiced much.  I'm taking a couple of weaving classes at Carolina Fiber Frolic in March, so hopefully I'll get better.

I've cast on a couple of new things, and I won't show you all of them, but one item is a reknit of the Water for the Elephants socks in the exact same yarn & colors as I knit them before.  I wrote here about the laundry tragedy that killed my last pair, so I won't repeat it now, but fortunately I have more of the same yarn, so they can be recreated!  Ann, one of the Carolina Fiber Girls recently started knitting herself a pair, and it inspired me to get started remaking mine.  So far I have a little of one leg done.

In spinning news, I finished my Sweets Off the Wheel group  "Squatch" SAL.  This was 3 different colorways of 2 ounces each of fiber from Three Waters Farm.  I ended up just spinning all 3 into singles and then plying the together as a 3 ply.  I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, although I had no idea what to expect. 

I also practiced my woolen spinning a little with some mystery fiber from last year's Carolina Fiber Frolic.  I plied some of it with some other random fiber I had on hand, and then when I ran out of that, I just chain plied the rest.  The result is just evidence that I should probably practice my woolen spinning more.  Or maybe not, I can't decide.  I really like the smoothness of worsted spun yarn, so that's kind of my preference.  On the other hand, woolen spun is much lighter, so would make a lighter sweater, etc.

I have no idea what I'll do with either of these.  They're only 87 yards combined.  I'm thinking about knitting them up into some squares and then felting them for coasters, although the blue/green I added to the one has some silk in it, but I think I don't think it's enough to keep it from felting enough to be dense.

That's about all my crafting since my last post.  I spent the weekend sick, and didn't knit a stitch or spin at all.  I still didn't feel 100% this morning, so I took the day off in the hopes that a little more rest, Vitamin C and ibuprofen would get rid of the last of the icks.  I felt a lot better by this afternoon so I did one productive thing and washed the pile of handspun that has been accumulating since sometime in October. It's a crappy picture, but you can see I'm not kidding when I say PILE of handspun.

I feel like I should have some sort of ending statement here, but I don't, so until next time....

Spin Stitch Knit Festival 2015

I've enjoyed having a few days off, but it's back to work tomorrow.  I got most of what I wanted to accomplished this weekend, not that it was an overly ambitious list to begin with, and I feel a little more organized at home heading into the start of a busy few months at work.

Saturday I went to a small new event in Stedman, NC called Spin Stitch Knit Festival 2015.  It was indeed a small event, but there were several nice vendors there and I came home with a few pretties.

The blue & yellow yarns on the left are both Whisper Fingering from Unplanned Peacock, an alpaca, silk, cashmere base that is sooooo soft.  They will probably be used together in a two-colored shawl.  The green/yellow yarn is also Unplanned Peacock in her Lustral Shawl, which is a fingering weight yarn in a 600 yard put up.  The yarn on the right is the event colorway, called Oceans 11, and it's from That Hooker Chick.

Also there was The Clay Sheep and I picked up a diz and some adorable stitch markers from her.

Until my friends Michiele and Roxie became bad influences I never bought buttons until I needed them for a specific project.  A couple of years ago they turned me to the dark side and my button stash has been slowly growing as well.  I added 4 of these gorgeous antique dragonfly buttons to my collection Saturday.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but it's hard to capture with all the shiny going on.

My friend Colleen went with me, and even though she's not a knitter or spinner she is a quilter, so she was both tolerant of my shopping and properly inquisitive about the various offerings and their purpose.  She even bought herself an Origami Owl bracelet, which is not spinning or knitting related, but I was glad she found something there she liked.

The event, though small, was worth the trip for me because I live only an hour away.  There were 9 or 10 vendors, and I figured if Unplanned Peacock was there it wouldn't be a total wasted trip.  They did have some food there, although we didn't actually eat anything there. They did offer some classes, but they didn't do a very good job of providing information ahead of time on what was and/or when those were being offered and I was only able to determine the exact classes and schedule the day before the event, at which point I had already made my plans.

Overall, if they do it again next year and it falls on a weekend I don't have other plans I might go again, but I'm not going to plan my weekend around being able to go.

Cotton Candy

This is what I made today.  I actually had most of the singles spun before today, so I just had to finish the last bit of the singles and then ply it.  That's not always a quick process for me, so this is my major accomplishment for the day and I'm fine with that.

Other than spinning I goofed around on the computer for a while and then spent the late afternoon sitting on the couch in the silence, reading a cheesy romance novel, wrapped in a blanket (because it's f**ing cold) with feline leg warmers.  It looked something like this....

Tomorrow will be less lazy and more productive, but I thoroughly enjoyed my day, including the take out sushi we had for dinner.

Calm Before the Storm

I got my 2014 Reading List up to date on here today and started my list for 2015. I can tell from the last few books I've read that I'm entering my mindless reading phase.  When my life gets busy and stressful my reading tends to be mostly Harlequin type romance.  They're escapism at its finest, coupled with guaranteed happy endings, and they give my brain a rest for a while from all the other stuff going on. 

Work is going to start getting busy again next week, so I'm taking the next two days off to have a 4 day weekend and try to combine a last couple of days of relaxation with getting a couple of things done.

Tomorrow is "relax day".  I'm going to spin, knit, read, weave, sleep, whatever I feel like doing at any given moment and not feel guilty about it or think about anything I "should" be doing.  At some point I will figure out what we're having for dinner, but it will most likely involve take out.

Friday is the day to get a few things done.  The pile of donations that have been sitting in first the floor of the guest room and then my craft room for over 3 months need to be listed, bagged, and dropped off at the Salvation Army.  If the weather report remains accurate and we don't get any rain, I will finally get the outside Christmas lights and wreath down and put away.  And finally, the largest project, I will get my craft room cleaned up and organized because right now it looks like everything exploded in there.

Saturday morning early Rob & I are heading to buy some wood so he can start the master bedroom closet built-ins.  When we get back from doing that I'm going to drive down to Stedman and check out the Spin Stitch Knit Festival.  It's new this year and probably small, but I figure I'll give it a chance.  I know that one of my favorite vendors Unplanned Peacock will be there, so that alone will make it worth the drive.

Sunday will be my normal routine, which mainly involves doing laundry and a trip to the grocery store, and gearing myself up to go back to work on Monday.  Hopefully by then I will feel ready for the months to come.

(Lack of) Planning for 2015

I've been thinking about goals for 2015, and I've essentially decided not to set any really specific goals for this year. 

My broad categories are still the same as always...eat healthier/exercise more/lose weight, and write more... things that I haven't made much progress on the past few years despite my yearly goal declarations.  I usually set some very specific goals within those categories and then I don't meet them and I feel bad about myself, or guilty, and that's just not productive.

So this year, no specific goals, at least not in a long range way.  I still want to eat healthier/exercise more/lose weight, but I know what I need to do to do that, and setting specific goals such as exercise 3 times per week apparently doesn't help me do it.  I still want to write more, but obligating myself to write here a certain number of days or work on my ever languishing novel a certain amount doesn't appear to work either.

I'm not even setting any knitting or spinning goals this year.  I usually start off the year with some goals such as "knit a pair of socks per month" or "knit 2 sweaters", etc., but this year I've declared that I'm going to knit or spin what I want, when I want with no obligations or deadlines, not even self-imposed ones.  That doesn't mean I don't currently have some thoughts on what I might want to knit this year, or that I won't knit for others.  I just started a baby blanket for a baby due in 3 months, but you know what, if it's not done until after the baby is born then so what?

The fact of the matter is, I'm already very stressed about how the next 7-8 months of work are going to go, and I just don't need any other reason to feel guilty about not getting something done.  I'm not giving up, I'm not depressed, I'm just trying to give myself permission to take things as they come and do what I can do and not beat myself up for those things I can't.

Tour de Fleece Recap

The Tour de France ended Sunday, and along with it the Tour de Fleece I told you about a few weeks ago.

This was my first year participating, and I think I can say it was a success.  I met my primary goal of spinning at least 10 minutes every day, even the weekend we had house guests.  Most days I spun for closer to an hour.

The result?  I've spun about 11 ounces of the polwarth/silk blend into singles.  I also spun the fulled single I posted about previously.

I plied a little last night just to see how it's turning out in the final product.  After the class I took Saturday, I decided I needed to see what I was actually producing before I get too much spun and it's not what I want.  I like the one I plied last night, but we'll see what it actually does when I wash it, it could plump up quite a bit and become a little heavier than I really would like.

I definitely think the daily spinning has improved my spinning a great deal.  I probably won't continue to spin every single day, but I do want to try to spin at least 3-4 days a week.  I'm going to be trying to tackle some non-fiber goals in August, so I while I want to keep spinning consistently, I'll step back a bit to allow more time for some other activities.

All in all, I enjoyed Tour de Fleece and knowing that I was part of a larger group also trying to achieve their own spinning goals.  I didn't participate in the Ravelry groups as much as I probably should have, but maybe next year.  Because I will definitely try to spin again in next year's Tour.

Spinning With a Purpose

Today I took a class on spinning with a purpose with my three best fiber friends, Michiele, Roxie & Peggy.  Nancy Shroyer, who is the owner of Nancy's Knit Knacks and also teaches workshops across the country, lives near us and was kind enough to let us come to her home for a private class with the four of us.

Thus far in my spinning, I've been spinning with a vague idea of how many plies I wanted to do, and sort of how thin or thick I wanted the yarn to be.  Then , when the yarn is finished, I figure out what to do with it.  Today I learned more about how to plan ahead to get the yarn I want.  In other words if I know I want to knit socks, how to plan and spin so that I actually end up spinning sock yarn.

And for one of my biggest questions...how much yarn do I need to spin (or even buy for that matter) for a project...Nancy has an awesome, although mathematical, way to figure that out if you're willing to....ummm...do a swatch  (yeah, I rarely do those, but maybe I'll change my mind for some projects).

We talked about different spinning techniques and what type of yarn they produce and what types of yarn are good for different types of projects.  I even managed to spin a decent woolen yarn! (Which probably means nothing to you if you're not a spinner, but trust me, I was VERY happy)

See my pretty, fluffy, woolen spun yarn?

I feel like I learned a lot of things I needed to know in order to take the next steps in improving my spinning. And as is usual when the four of us are together, we had a great time, with lots of talking and laughing in the midst of all the learning. 

Many thanks to Nancy for a great day and also to her canine helpers Ripley and Clay for my doggie fix for the week.

Aren't they cute?

Spinning My Wheels

I spent the afternoon in Chapel Hill with the Chapel Hill Spinners.  On the drive up, I had a plan.  That plan was to take lots of pictures of everyone spinning and all the lovely spinning wheels and spindles so I could share that with you here and fill up most of the page with pictures.

Yeah, well...I didn't take a single picture.  I got there and was having so much fun chatting and ooohing and aaahing over what everyone was doing that I just completely, and totally forgot until I was pulling out of the parking lot to head home.

There were a lot of lovely wheels and spindles and tons of gorgeous fiber being spun.  Maryann of Three Waters Farm also had some fabulous fiber for sale.

So even though my brilliant plan was a fail, you still get this post, just without all the pretty pictures.  But I did manage to get 2 oz. of my polwarth/silk spun and finished filling another bobbin, so you'll have to make do with a picture of that.

A little boring I know, but it will be fabulous when plied and dyed and knit into a sweater!

Anyway, if you're a spinner and live within a reasonable distance of Chapel Hill, come join us.  It's a friendly group of people of all kinds and very informal. If you're not a spinner, but would like to learn, Maryann does a free drop spindle lesson an hour before the meeting time every time we meet.  Meetings are once a month either on a Sunday afternoon or a Wednesday night and they're posted on the Facebook page linked above.  We're skipping August, so next meeting is September and the tentative date is September 17.

A Full Day

You may remember that I told you about the fiber I dyed at Carolina Fiber Frolic, which didn't turn out at all like I'd planned, and how I used Michiele's drum carder to turn it into batts for spinning.

I spun that up this past week and I decided to try my hand at a fulled single ply yarn.  Fulling is pretty much like felting, you just don't do it as long or as hard so they yarn doesn't really felt, it just starts to.  The fulling of a single helps it stay together so that the fiber doesn't separate when you knit, crochet or weave with it.

This was the result.  I'm not in love with it in a lot of ways, but I'm not completely disappointed either.  I don't remember what kind of wool this was, but I have a suspicion that it was at least partially superwash something because it didn't full all that much.  It did a little, enough that I think the yarn will stay together and be usable, but this might not have been the best fiber to test my fulling skills.

There is definitely more twist in the singles than I should have for a fulled single, so I have a feeling the yarn will bias a lot if I try to knit with it.  I think I'm probably going to try weaving with it, if I can figure out what to combine it with to make something attractive.

After all that, I'm still most disappointed in the color.  It's all muted and muddy and while it is sort of pretty in a way, it's so far from what I was going for that I just look at it and go "meh".  I'm going to have to do some thinking to decide what might bring out more of the color in a weaving project.

In addition to getting the yarn washed this morning, I also washed all the baby gifts I've knit for my soon to be born nephew so that I can hopefully get those in the mail soon.  We went to a birthday party for one of Rob's coworker's 1 year old daughter for a couple of hours this afternoon and then went out to dinner before coming home.

So yes, it was a full day.  I know, I'm groaning too, but I couldn't resist

Friends & Fiber - Part 2

Although the fiber retreat was in Candor, just south of Asheville, we actually stayed in Burnsville, just north of Asheville because Roxie has a very kind friend Maryann that has a house there she lets us use on occasion.  Not having to pay for a hotel room really helps out and we REALLY appreciate her letting us stay (I don't think she even knows about this blog, so I'm not saying that just to suck up either).

Silk scarf dyed by Roxie

Roxie had a class Saturday morning to learn how to do another kind of dyeing, so we headed back down to the retreat for the morning.   The plan was to spend the morning at the retreat, have some lunch somewhere and then head back to the house to spend the afternoon crafting.  But the great thing about traveling with Michiele and Roxie is that plans can change and we all go with the flow.

The retreat was actually held at a middle school just up the road from the Friends & Fiberworks store, so after we left there we stopped by the actual store to browse around (and maybe make a couple of purchases).  While there we found out about yet another yarn shop just north of Asheville on our way back to Burnsville, so we had to stop there as well.  That store, The Knitting Diva, is relatively new, but it is an awesome store.  They dealt oh so well with our particular brand of crazy while we were there & we will definitely visit it again when we're back in the area.  I may have spent a little money in that one. (Have you been keeping count?  That's five yarns stores in the general Asheville area.)

Cute sheep outside Yummi Yarns

There's also a yarn shop in Burnsville called Yummi Yarns.  We had been there before, but they've moved to a new location since our last visit, so we had to check it out as well.  I did buy a skein of sock yarn there to make Rob another pair of socks.

By the time we got back to the house around dinner time, our massive crafting plans had dwindled a bit, but that doesn't mean we did nothing.  Michiele had brought her drum carder so I spent a little time turning some fiber I had dyed at Carolina Fiber Frolic, but wasn't really thrilled with into something that I may actually want to spin.

This, which was muddy and kind of compacted

Turned into these, which are light and airy and hopefully will be nice to spin

I also used the drum carder to blend two different colored fibers together into batts.

This became....

This

We took our time heading out Sunday.  We stopped by to see a former coworker of Roxie's who has recently moved to the area and then had a wonderful brunch at Kirkwood's Cafe before finally getting on the road.

Overall, a great time, and I can't wait to do it again!

The Closest I'll Ever Get to the Tour de France

The Tour de France started yesterday, July 5th and goes until July 27th, with only the 15th and 21st as rest days.  That's 21 days of riding a bicycle, in other words, a lot of damn bicycle riding.

In the fiber world however, that means it's time for Tour de Fleece!  Yes, fleece, as in the wool off of a sheep.  The primary goal of Tour de Fleece is to spin every day that the Tour de France rides.

There's no official website, but there are a lot of groups and teams on Ravelry participating.  Each person chooses their own goals for the event, and some of the groups do prizes for meeting your goals, but it's really just about setting a goal for your spinning and trying to achieve it. 

This is my first year participating since it's the first year I've been a spinner.  My goals are pretty modest in my opinion.  My primary goal is to spin at least 10 minutes every day of the event.  This week should be relatively quiet at work, so I should be home at a decent hour every night, but who knows what it will be like after that, so just making time to spin every day might turn out to be a challenge.

My secondary goal is to get as much of this box of fiber spun as possible.  That lovely dreaminess is 40 ounces of Three Waters Farm polwarth/silk.  The plan is to spin it into a 3-ply yarn, dye it an as yet undetermined color, and knit a sweater out of it.  40 ounces is probably way more than I need for a sweater, even for my larger size, but I wanted to have plenty to mess up with in both the spinning and the dyeing.

I started spinning this fiber a little this week before the official start of Tour de Fleece, but I've almost got one bobbin full of singles.  That's not quite 4 ounces on the bobbin at the moment.

Knowing me, 21 days of spinning the exact same thing might get a little boring, so I may spin something with a little color a few of those days (I can already imagine how handy it would be to have a 2nd wheel), but right now I'm motivated to get a lot of this done.  The polwarth/silk blend drafts wonderfully so it's very relaxing to spin.

That's not all I've got going on though, stay tuned tomorrow for a peek at my newest fiber craft.